How Many Women Are Overweight? The Answer Is Most

The average American woman wears a size 16 to 18 and weighs much more than she should. Photo: marin/Flickr

Republican Donald Trump revealed two weeks ago he’s overweight, tipping the scales at 236 pounds. But how much does Democrat Hillary Clinton weigh? If she’s like the average American woman, she wears a size 16, taking her out of the svelte category.

The issue of women’s weight made its appearance during the first presidential debate Monday night when Clinton called out Trump for the nasty things he has said about some women, including comedian Rosie O’Donnell and former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, whom he called “Miss Piggy” for gaining weight after she was crowned, among others.

Trump called O’Donnell a “pig” and a “loser,” saying she had a “fat, ugly face,” after she called him a “snake oil salesman.” He told Machado she’d never be an actress because “nobody wants fat girls on TV.”

While Trump and the fashion industry may think thin is in, most women are not.

Some 67 percent of American women are considered plus-size, size 14 or larger. But only 1 or 2 percent of the women seen in mainstream media are of the larger variety. A study by Washington State university researchers Deborah Christel and Susan Dunn found the average woman wears size 16 to 18.

The numbers, however, are deceptive. What was a size 12 two decades ago is now labled a size 6 or 8.

American women are about 25 pounds heavier on average now than they were in 1960, an 18.5 percent increase, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. That means the average woman today weighs 166.2 pounds, as much as the average man did in 1960. Since 1960, Americans are about an inch taller.

HealthCheck Systems puts the ideal weight for an average height woman (5-foot-4) at 114 to 151 pounds, depending on frame. For 166 pounds to be a healthy weight, a woman would need to be 5-foot-8 and large framed.

The BBC broadcast a documentary on the autopsy of a 5-foot-5 Long Beach, California, woman weighing 238 pounds who died of heart failure to show the effects of obesity on the body. The woman carried much of her fat around the belly, and the pathologist performing the autopsy said she had trouble cutting through the tissue. The heart was baggy and weighed nearly twice what would have been expected, showing the damage excess fat can have on internal organs.